thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-12, joshua m. neff wrote:
Sydney, yes, humans inherently do stupid things. We fuck up. We hurt ourselves and each other. We make mistakes. But, y'know, making mistakes is not really all that big a deal to me. I mean, I'm not aiming to be a saint. I don't want to be perfect. I'm not a rapist or a torturer or a murderer. I've never sold drugs to kids. I've never made money from the munitions or tobacco industries. I've never been a party to genocide, war, enslavement or child abuse. At the end of the day, the worst thing I've generally done is made someone I care about feel lousy, because I lost my temper or I was feeling spiteful. So, the next day I'll apologize and do my best to let them know they're a good person and I appreciate their existence in my life. So, yeah, humans do stupid things. We're weak, we're foolish, we're mercurial. I don't see that as a bad thing or as a source of despair. I don't feel I need the strength to overcome that. Heck, I don't want to overcome that. If you want to live like Superman, it means you have to be bumbling, stumbling, dorky, cowardly Clark Kent at least part of the time.
Also...
I find Vincent's "dirt" bit intensely profound and uplifting. I'll admit, I sort of wish I were immortal, or at least extremely longlived, because I'm horribly curious about what will happen to humanity. But really, I think immortality is a bit weird. If I become dirt when I die, if there is no such thing as a "soul" and after I die I'm just dead, that's really pretty cool to me. All things must pass. Nothing lasts forever. Everything changes. But while I'm here, I'll do my best to make the people I care about happy. I'll do my best to make the world around me a happy place. And then I'll be gone. This is not a source of despair for me. Dirt is good.
